The libertarian fantasy simply stated is
that we reverse the process followed by the Framers of
the Constitution, dissolve law and government
and return to the State of Nature. It is the
expression of a demoralized public mood and
a defeatist retreat from political life. It
asserted itself in the last half of the twentieth
century the way a religion might suddenly
permeate a society. The process is not rational
but it captures many minds. When the libertarian
fantasy receives enormous financial backing from
self-serving rightwing economic interests, it
becomes a potent political force. Friedman and
McDowell give a brief overview of the ideology
and its contradictions arriving at an observation
on the difference between "total (or near total)
liberty" and "ordered liberty." What the Potowmack
Institute calls the "rightwing movement"
fails to appreciate the distinction.
Anything that could be called truly "conservative"
would have to embrace ordered liberty. See
.../index.html,
.../597intro.html, and
.../parkamic.html,

The libertarian fantasy has produced an enormous volume
of preposterous pseudoscholarship published in recent
years mostly in law journals. See
.../196locke.html, and
LaPierre's list. The
pseudoscholarship is a great service to the gun lobby. When
modernity becomes more than some people can handle they invent
an individualist fantasy.

Libertarianism as a political
movement is an odd, amorphous sort of phenomenon; but
however difficult it may be to pin down a single universally
acceptable definition of libertarianism, one fact is
clear: since its founding in 1971 the Libertarian Party
has made rather steady progress in American politics.
As the American mood has turned more conservative, the
libertarians have become an important part of the
conservative coalition. The libertarian positions on
such issues as welfare, busing, and anti-trust find a
friendly audience among most conservatives. The party
itself, backed by a remarkable confederation of institutes
and publications, has been able to capture public attention
by appealing simply and directly to the underlying sentiment
in American politics that as far as government goes,
small is definitely beautiful.

The formal party activity of the libertarians is in
many ways the least visible aspect of the libertarian
movement. The party itself is backed by a network of
foundations, publications, and thinkers that, from
blatantly partisan pamphleteers to more philosophic
writers such as Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State,
and Utopia and Friedrich Hayek in the three-volume
Law, Legislation and Liberty broadcasts the
libertarian message: the "interventionist state" is
utterly at odds with liberty. The works of Hayek,
Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Thomas Sowell,
and other thinkers whose works satisfy at least certain
strands of libertarianism are routinely reviewed
(favorably), distilled (judiciously), and sold
(inexpensively) by libertarian publications and
those generally sympathetic to some if not all
of the tenets of libertarianism. From libertarian
advertisements in the conservative Intercollegiate
Review; for instance, one can snap up a copy of
Frank S. Meyer's In Defense of Freedom for
$1.00; and Hayek's massive The Constitution of
Liberty is going for a mere $5.00 (a hardcover
edition that regularly costs $19.95). Similarly, The
Liber-

The Libertarian Movement in America 51

tarian Party News features "The Libertarian
Party Book Service," which offers copies of often
hard-to-find gospels at good prices. Other nonparty
publications such as The Freeman do the same.
Such literary hustling is directed at what most
libertarian activists agree is the biggest problem
facing the movement: educating libertarians as
opposed to the public at large in the "ethics,
principles, and policies of libertarianism." The
effort is more than proselytism: it is a matter
of party purity.
7

Hayek warned that economic planning the attempt to shackle
the invisible hand of the free market, would lead to a creed of

54 The Journal of Contemporary Studies Summer 1983

unrestrained egalitarian collectivism. When this
misguided notion came to infect democratic regimes, it
would be the cause of their destruction, and therewith of
the political concern for preserving individual liberty.
Economic planning by the centralized state, is
above all else, the most direct route to a new and
stifling brand of serfdom. Hayek urged a return to
the higher though increasingly abandoned road of classical
liberalism.

The cause of the change in direction of Western regimes
from individualist to collectivist had been the modern
fascination far achieving "social justice" the desire
for leveling, for reducing the distinctions and disparities
among people. This concern for social justice, in
turn, was the result of a shift in the way law is
understood. Law is no longer viewed primarily as a set
of negative restraints on human passions and wickedness;
it is viewed most of all as a positive force for promoting
the general welfare. In the new understanding it is the
rote of law to remove the imperfections of nature. As a
result the notion of justice suffered a like
transmogrification. Justice now "makes it the duty of
society to see that individuals have particular things."
15

To be free, truly free, men must be left alone to choose
how they will live their lives and dispose of the fruits
of their labors; to place demands or restrictions on such
economic freedom is to destroy any meaningful notion of
political liberty.

Free-market economics, with its clear dedication to the
principle of individual autonomy, provides a solid point
of departure for the political science of libertarianism.
Not only does such an economic order leave men free, it
makes them happy; and the happiness of the
citizen is essential to the stability and vitality of
the nation. The

The second principle necessary for sound politics is
the dispersion among competing sovereignty of whatever
governmental powers are deemed necessary in short,
federalism. While big, centralized government undoubtedly
has the power to do good and to offer social comfort
on a grand scale, it inevitably has the power to do harm
as well. "The great tragedy of the drive to centralize,
as of the desire to extend the scope of government in
general, is that it is mostly led by men of good will
who will be the first to rue its consequences."
19

Ayn Rand thus tried to turn the industrialist and the
merchant into a hero, and in so doing to turn capitalism
into something heroic, and belief in capitalism into
something ennobling. Following Rand one could make
the case for capitalism without a sense of guilt a
sense

The Libertarian Movement in America 57

that had until then always accompanied capitalism. Rand
denied the guilt-ridden moralism of Adam Smith, for
instance. Smith had always hedged his economic bets with
too many weak-kneed moral sentiments. He wrote:

The disposition to admire and almost to worship, the
rich and powerful, and to despise or at least, to
reflect persons of poor and mean condition, though
necessary both to establish and maintain the distinction
of ranks and order in society, is, at the same time, the
great and most universal cause of corruption of our
moral sentiment.
24

Rand had no hesitation in celebrating those properly rich
and powerful, and therefore gave libertarianism its
strongest theoretical and psychological impulse. For Rand
the eternal struggle between man and nature was profoundly
individualistic. In her view, the creative reason necessary
for productivity is both scarce among men and possible
only in a man who loves himself first. This unapologetic
self-love is the motor pushing the creative genius
forward. Like Howard Roarke in The Fountainhead,
the creator creates in order to make a monument to
himself.
25
And there is nothing wrong with that.